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Factoid #6

by Scott Muoio

Composting. Separating paper from yard waste. Removing clean paper from soiled paper. Push mowers instead of gas. Government implemented solar panel projects. Hemp as an environmentally sound alternative fiber. Reuse as a city-wide mantra. In many ways, Seattle is the most gung-ho “green” city I have ever witnessed. The citizens are vigilant, the government concerned and active, and the reputation for conservation growing by the day. Why then, with all this activism does everyone own a car and why is the Seattle public transit system an also-ran in the area’s transportation situation? Is this a delicate balance of give two to take one or rather typical hypocritical blowhardery?

I believe Seattle is sincere in its conservation activism but I also believe we need a bit of a reality check. Travel around Seattle for any length of time and it is obvious cars are numero uno on the transportation front. Stand next to Interstate-5 for any length of time and it’s single rider central. Buses pass intermittently but you’ll be hard pressed to find Seattleites who can do without the convenience of their automobile. Sure, motorcycles and scooters are ever-present on the local roadways as well, but in a city with a green conscience and mild weather year-round you might expect even more of them than you’ll presently see rolling down Pike and Pine. But for the most part, these two-wheeled motorized machines continue to be an enormous minority. As for the motorcycle’s two-wheeled manual counterpart, the bicycle, it is likewise a sad minority but mainly, I believe, because the enormous hills of the area make pedal power a very difficult proposition as a main form of transport.

Buses, the city’s only viable current means of public transport, well let’s just say I wouldn’t set my watch to them or plan anything more than a one and done route. For the most part though Seattle buses do a decent job transporting a person north and south to and from downtown along the two major Seattle roadways, Aurora and Interstate-5, but try to plan what should be a twenty minute excursion in any other direction and you’re talking one and half hours of bus changing, appointment missing pandemonium. Perhaps I’m exaggerating slightly but only slightly. On top of that consider the city’s miniscule taxi brigade a nonexistent player, especially when the best way to contact one is with each driver’s own personal business card. What!? This is clearly a certain recipe for drunk driving as the likely means home post-business hours, another blight on conscientious Seattle I doubt they’ll want published in the guidebooks.

And what’s with all those old clunkers chugging up and down Seattle’s hills? With no inspection and only an emissions test the requirement for keeping a car on the road in Seattle you will find all means of ancient vehicles on the city’s streets. On the one hand keeping a car going rather than succumbing to the following the Joneses mentality is honorable and environmentally sound, but not when the thing is an inefficient gas guzzling monster shooting pollutants sky high without regard. It’s just another piece to an ever-increasing puzzle about which route is the best toward environmental preservation.

What then is the solution to staying the conservation route while also conveniently making your way around town? Currently, King County is in the process of constructing a light rail system that will transport citizens from downtown to the international airport 30 miles away in Sea-Tac. An excellent idea, for sure, but with the amount of money put into this effort and silver line buses and city shuttles already providing this service, couldn’t the money have been better spent branching into Seattle from downtown in many directions rather than merely straight south and almost predominantly outside city limits? Sure, I’m a north Seattle snob, but when duplication of effort is the best a city can do for transportation improvement even after citizens vote for immediate change and OK light rail in all its forms it leaves a person scratching his head wondering why all the hypocrisy.

As a Boston area resident for roughly the last ten years, I managed to do without a car the entire time I lived there. Certainly, I had my share of friends driving my sorry ass from place to place but for the most part, it was the subway or bust for yours truly. In 2001, the last time I called Seattle home, I lived in Fremont, worked downtown, and likewise lived without a car. However, if not for everyone I know owning a car and my propensity (and stupidity) for walking home alone late at night when Seattle transit was, for the most part, dead and gone, I wouldn’t have ventured anywhere outside my immediate apartment’s and place of business’s vicinity. It is a shame, this case of green thinking and doing in all cases save transit, but one in which I hope Seattle can move to change in the near future. It’s no problem to love your car, but it’s another thing to live in a city and be almost nothing without it.

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Noted something strange or interesting in or about Seattle? Tell us about it. Email scottmuoio@undependentmedia.com

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